UWO business, finance programs pay significantly more than other disciplines

UWO business, finance programs pay significantly more than other disciplines

Jan. 5, 2013

Professor Al Hartman of College of Business, right, checks on students on their group project for his Essentials of Organizational Behavior course Thursday at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Professors in the College of Business are the highest paid group at UWO, earning about 56 percent more than their colleagues. / Shu-Ling Zhou/Oshkosh Northwestern Media

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Oshkosh Northwestern Media

At a glance

Average base salaries for UWO professors by college. College of Business: $98,802 College of Nursing: $80,353 College of Education and Human Services: $69,162 College of Letters and Sciences: $61,669

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Professors earned a combined $23 million from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh last year, with those teaching business and finance classes taking a larger share of the money.

Full professors, associate professors and assistant professors in the College of Business earned an average base salary of $98,802 during the 2011-12 school year. That’s 56 percent more than their colleagues, who earned an average of $63,475, in every other department at the state’s third largest university, Oshkosh Northwestern Media found by analyzing compensation records obtained through an open records request.

When considering overload pay — additional pay for academic pay beyond the base courseload, also called overage — the 44 business professors had total wages averaging $105,169, or 62 percent more than the $65,051 earned, on average, by their colleagues, the review found.

The disparities cause friction between professors, who for the most part have the same general responsibilities despite working in different subject areas. Faculty morale has been further eroded because pay freezes and furloughs imposed by the state during the past several years have caused wages to stagnate and slide behind the national average, said Faculty Senate President Jim Simmons, a political science professor paid $73,659 in 2011-12.

Low pay coupled by benefit cuts imposed on most public-sector workers, including university employees, by the state’s 2011-12 budget has caused many professors to feel their jobs are no longer valued, Simmons said.

“Sure, there is low morale and a problem with turnover,” he said, but “it’s not the low compensation. It’s that there’s no appreciation.”

The nine highest paid professors at UWO are all in the College of Business. They earned salaries ranging from $117,500 to more than $150,000. Professors in the department of nursing earned the second-highest pay, averaging $89,034.

The lowest-paid professors are those teaching music, history, religion and environmental studies. They averaged less than $54,500 in 2011-12.

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Chancellor Richard Wells said the differences don’t necessarily reflect the overall quality or value placed on a specific department or individual professor so much as the job market for specific disciplines.

Salaries are driven higher in the College of Business because of a shortage of qualified faculty and competition from the private sector. UWO is also accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, which requires the university to maintain a minimum number of accredited, and, therefore, more highly sought after, faculty members.

“We have an unusual competitive dynamic happening in the business school that in a way forces us to pay at a higher level to maintain our faculty, and we need that faculty to maintain our accreditation, but we need that accreditation to attract new faculty. Its sort of a vicious cycle,” Dean William Tallon said.

The college deans said they’re sensitive to the frustration caused by the variation in salaries, but they feel forced to respond to the value the market and society place on certain fields.

John Koker, dean of the college of letters and sciences, said he’s been trying to set starting pay for all new faculty in his college around $50,000 to keep pay rates closer together. However, market conditions have forced him to give much higher pay to computer science professors just to get them in the door.

Computer science professors earned an average base salary of $85,017 in 2011-12 compared to other professors in the college of letters and sciences who earned an average of $60,735.

“That is one discipline right now that is demanding a higher starting salary. I think really, across the board, the sciences demand higher salaries than arts and humanities,” Koker said.

Pay still low

Despite higher salaries, professors in business and other high-demand disciplines are routinely courted by other, higher paying universities, Tallon said, adding that he believes even UWO’s highest paid faculty member could earn more money somewhere else.

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Scott Beyer, an associate professor of finance in the College of Business, earned the highest pay at $150,331, which included $147,531 in base pay and an additional $2,800 for overload work.

Beyer was not available for an interview for this story but provided a list of his responsibilities and accomplishments and referred all other questions to Tallon.

Beyer’s signature contribution to UWO is the creation of an insurance program, an in-demand discipline nationwide and one of the only such programs in Wisconsin. Since 2011, Beyer has been the director of the Center for Risk Management and Insurance at UWO.

“Other schools have tried to recruit him away. He’s a great guy, and his reputation is national,” Tallon said. “It’s all about market again, if we didn’t become creative with this additional funding we probably wouldn’t have Scott here, nor would we have the insurance program that makes a lot of Fox Valley businesses happy.”

Professors in every department at UWO are paid less than their peers in other states and at private universities.

UWO professors of all ranks and subject areas earned base salaries averaging $68,451 in 2011-12. The national average salary that same year was $82,556, according to a 2012 survey of 1,251 colleges and universities by the American Association of University Professors.

There are 194 UWO professors who earned less than the highest paid K-12 school teachers in Oshkosh, who received $69,968 in 2011-12. And, 22 professors earned less than the average Oshkosh K-12 school teacher salary of $50,629.

Wells said he believes the main reason pay at UWO and across most of Wisconsin’s public universities is low is that it’s set by the state, not the local institutions. He also said raises are set based on local market conditions, but the universities are competing on a national, and sometimes international level, for faculty.

Low salaries have “made us really sensitive to making people feel really good about working in our universities. I like to say we’ve got along for a long time on our looks, but now that has ended. There’s going to be even more competition for talent, and the big thing we need to pay attention to in our state ... is how we recruit and retain and develop talent in our labor force,” Wells said.